cerealjoe | Entries tagged with gali has profound thoughts

Day 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 // 16 // 17 // 18 // 19 // 20 // 21 // 22: my favorite website.

I like aggregating things, not only in my work but also in real life and so the title of my favourite website goes to GoogleReader! Here is even a meta-phototaking GR tribute:

(Chinon. Agfa 200. Meta ice cream and pigs.)

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about today. This morning I was trying on some dress trousers to see if I should take them to my upcoming conference instead my usual skirts because it's supposed to be colder there and I'm over tights for this season. As I was trying these trousers I realised that I needed to find a belt that would go with them... because that's one of those things us pear shaped people have to do, unless they're really low cut trousers, belts are a must. Also stuff like a nice one piece swimming suit, it's so rare finding something that's wide enough at the bottom but doesn't expect you to have stomach or boobs or shoulders... same goes for dresses.

Then I thought about all the models out there. Obviously you have the "girl, you need a sandwich" models and now more and more "plus size" models (if "plus size" means 46-48...) but there aren't many who are my size and shape (pear shaped, 40 at the bottom, bony and pretty flat at the top). Even the "plus size" models are, well, they're really nicely proportional. Heck I've even seen the old school Sophie Dahl called "pear shaped" when she was an amazingly stunning hourglass. So where are the pear shaped models? All those companies are promoting "real women" campaigns but I don't see my shape and size in those women.

In the end, is it just me or are pear shaped people forgotten?

And thus I continue on my unhappy streak, I keep on posting these whiny things. Gali, what's up with you? It's like you keep all your negativity for LJ...

In Vaudeville, the performers were asked not to swear as "son of a gun" could offend innocent ears. These days kids watch the Jersey Shore, and from this rather hilarious Jersey Shore Gone Wilde, a five part series in which the pair reenact actual transcripts of Jersey Shore episodes ‘in the style of Oscar Wilde’, I can assume that the language in the original series is rather colourful.

Also makes me wonder if they get bleeped out a lot or if they no longer bleep out things on cable telly.

The musings of Easter Monday. That's not a French thing, Easter Monday, right? Everyone has the day off or not?

Often on my daily commutes I listen to podcasts. The other day I was listening to Stuff Mom Never Told You's podcast on Home Economics. It's amazing the history that we often ignore for this often looked down on subject. I highly suggest that you go check out that podcast, it's from 03/11/2010.

So the story is that actually the vision we have of Home-Ec today is largely influenced by second wave feminists who never bothered to really check the history and the true goals of the original Home-Ec classes. We think of this as a high school class where some old lady teaches to sew and cook and perhaps gives some info on child rearing, it's mostly girls and often they're too ashamed to tell their friends they're taking it.

The truth is, the person who started Home Ec classes made those classes for college students and as means of getting women into colleges because prior to that... well, higher education was definitely not on most women's agenda. The main goal for the classes was to provide women with scientific information such as hygiene, child development theory, nutrition (super useful during rationing times), etc. Back then they didn't have refrigerators and proper kitchens so actually knowing how to keep things fresh and knowing how to quickly go about chores as to have time to do other things during the day, such as going out, were absolutely necessary. They got to learn how to use things they never encountered before such as washing machines. The colleges even had special apartments where everyone would practice and they also had real babies brought from local orphanages on which all the theories learnt in class could be applied. And apparently those "test" babies were very sought after for adoption because they basically had the best rearing possible, good food, good education, etc., stuff that wasn't available at an orphanage.

Basically the original Home Ec courses empowered women. They had an opportunity to put that foot into the door and get into college. They learnt scientific methods. And, unlike what second wave feminists claim, those classes are not responsible for keeping women in the home. They got them out of the home, not only to attend the classes, but they also taught women how to be efficient as to be able to get out of the house more. Back in the day everything was done by hand, that took a lot of time, an hour gained per day was a lot.

What brought an end to those courses was the fact that someone had the brilliant idea to say that those courses would only get funded if they followed a more vocational training style and the quality went down and they only started attracting people who wanted to teach Home Ec in high school, the classes we know today, the sewing and cooking.

I think that the original Home Ec college courses should be brought back. At the end of the day, whether you're a working man or woman, stay at home mum or dad, you're going to be spending time at home. I think that home life would be much more meaningful if people actually had decent scientific information on nutrition (hello obesity problems!), hygiene (we're over clean these days and it's starting to cause problems), medication, cooking, basic appliance functions, etc. Even sewing, it's amazing that many people don't have a basic sewing kit at home, you're always going to get tiny holes here and there, why not fix them instead of throwing things out or desperately waiting till you go back to your parents' so mum fixes it? Recycling could be another subject, when you have the hard facts behind it, I'm sure more people would take it more seriously.

Let's be honest, when most people hit freshman year in college, they're still kids. I say, empower those kids with good hard facts and useful skills.

So there, just listen to the podcast, it's quite good, you get tons of interesting dates there and a lot more facts.

Day 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 // 16 // 17 // 18 // 19 // 20: someone who shares the same birthday as me.

I can only think of two people I know share my birthday. A guy I went to school with, born on the same day of the same year. A close CSer from Helsinki is also my birthday twin although she was not born in the same year.

And hey, random super power wish talk! I've seen more and more of my photos of my photo Tumblr reblogged with random text added, as in someone will write stuff and will include my photo to illustrate it. It's good when the text is related to the subject in the photo (latest example: digestive biscuits) but sometimes they're absolutely not related. At least in my mind I can't see the connection. It's rather amusing, makes me wish I could have a super duper power that would let me see these types of things. Would be useful in conversations when someone blurts out something that seems completely random but it is not random for their mind.

And now, the last of a roll of Chinon/Kodak200 combo!

( +4 - garden related )

About yesterday's entry I do have to nuance my "no point in drinking alone" statement. What I meant is "no point in getting drunk alone or drinking crap alone, even in small quantities". Sometimes there are reasons to drink alone such as when you are travelling alone, the tourist experience would never be complete without a taste of the local alcohol that you can't find back home. Sometimes you also fall on a very good bottle of wine you might want to open with dinner without inviting anyone else along.

Nuances, the stuff of life!

Here I was going to include some really witty transition from booze to drugs and I thought that would be a great opener for photos of a mushroom, the size of a small cat or almost, that was found in the garden under a huge overturned clay pot. It sounded brilliant in my head but typed out it looked like shite.

(for all the mushroom lovers out there, click for a much bigger set of photos)

Years after it came out I fell on an episode of Skins. I do hope it's not representative of a large partion of the UK population because that is one awful show. If kids watch this, no wonder sometimes their behaviour is questionable.

Then again maybe that's how the world is and I've been lucky to live in a nice little bubble that does not involve smoking, drugs, heavy drinking and random sex. Heck, even my views on alcohol would probably be considered as scandalously prude by many because I really see no reason to drink besides a casual drink (and stuff worth drinking, not the cheap crap) with peeps once in a while, I certainly don't see any sense in getting drunk or drinking by yourself. Oh, I guess I must just be lucky to have found happiness elsewhere than at the bottom of a bottle of cheap wine, whatever floats your boat, as my 7th grade maths teacher would say... Hopefully my 70 year old self will be glad that my intoxication experimenting nights can be counted on my fingers (and perhaps toes), perhaps thanks to the stupid drunkies that plague a lot of écoles around here, especially on Thursday nights, they are such trainwrecks that after seeing one or two I decided not to follow their steps.

Do I sound like a total prude for a 25 year old? In the end, I'll just be really glad that I've found my way ~~in j/kpop and Marimekko bags~~.

And in terms of being happy, these photos make me happy. There is just that certain something that pleases me about them.

( +3 - quand on aime... )

This evening, while listening to Liszt's Love Dream 3 on the way home a strange though came to me. Isn't that main song of Irony of Fate (Ирония Судьбы) based on it?

Liszt's Love Dream 3 - here (Lang Lang's version, not my favourite but sometimes you can't be too picky).

Со мною вот что происходит - here.

Am I going crazy?

Perhaps it's just my cluttered mind. Given the state of my desk, my mind is more than cluttered... Given the state of my work bag it's not only cluttered, it's full of irrevelant thoughts.

I'll let you be the judge.

Yep. Oh well.

Mes samedis. November. Zenit-E. Redscale 100.

Ah. The little things in life. They do matter.

And one of those thoughts that one randomly has in a food induced coma on Friday nights - the kid from Les Choristes turned out rather not bad looking. Still, he's a 90er... makes me feel like an old dirty aunt just thinking that.

Am I so out of the whole pop and modern culture circle that I missed the memo about mustaches becoming the new black?

Everyone for the past couple of months seems to be all over the mustache look. From the mustache parties, to the mustache finger tattoos, to the fake mustache photoshoots... and sticking a mustache on that lady statue in front of the Hôtel de Ville!

Can anyone give me a nutshell history of the phenomenon? I get Movember but this seems to have a started rather independently and not for a charity.

I'll be honest though, I find it a tad tacky, a fake mustache does not make you awesome and beautiful... it's still just you but with a tacky fake mustache. It's like those thick rimmed glasses, they were nice at first but once everyone and their mother's dog started wearing some, it got out of hand.

And those were my weekly opinionated two cents, life is good.

There are a couple of places in Paris that I consider "my" spots. Somehow they're linked with random memories... sitting here or walking there. Then there are places that I one day deemed as places that I do not like. One of those places is Montmartre. I can't even remember the last time I was there. I decided to give it another chance and yet again it failed to conquer me.

Everyone knows Montmartre because of that damned Amelie film. I do not like that film, I really do not. Given the choice of those random colourful French films, I'd pick "Jeux d'enfants" (Love me if you dare) over Amelie any day. I don't know if Montmartre is now even more touristy than before, probably. For every tourist, there is someone trying to sell something and there is always someone trying to take a photo, that in the end they will never even look at.

I climbed the stairs to the church, I walked around and I decided the view from there wasn't worth it in the end. And so I left and went to wander around the side streets, that is still the best thing to do in popular places.

( +2 - the church and skies )

Going to touristy places reminds me over and over that in the end this LJ has more value for me than I could possibly describe. There are so many people out there with their cameras and I just know that most will never look at their holiday photos! At best they'll end up on some random folder on FaceBook. Most likely they'll just be uploaded into a folder on a computer "to be looked at later"... but that "later" will never come. It kind of makes me feel sad for all those lost photos.

I do some weird things (like taking a fancy to some skimpy green shorts and wearing them still even though it's 2C outside), sometimes I hear something that intrigues and I write it down in my agenda.

Two weeks ago I wrote down: question: gros hamster d'Alsace.

I can't remember what the exact question was. I did google it today though, it seems it's "grand hamster d'Alsace" and not "gros", they're going extinct. Didn't click on any of the links google provided though... the hamster from Alsace stays a mystery.

( +2 of random skies and pink things )

Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.

You know why I don't think that owning a television is a good idea? There is a lot of trainwreck telly out there and one just can't look away. The hotel has some random channels including Eurosport in German. They had speedskating for a while, already it was a tad of a trainwreck because I don't get a single bit of that... but now they have woodcutting with chainsaws. Oh wait! Now it's switched to "Strongman Champions League" Ukraine vs. Europe and they're lifting ridiculous weights with one hand while others stand in front of firetrucks and I have a feeling that soon they'll start pulling them.

( some live typing while watching )

In other news, the weather has been rather grey, humid, foggy and cold around these parts. I suppose it's because I brought along all that redscale film which is terrible under these conditions. Nevertheless I noticed that they've already started to install those Christmas stands on Champs-Elysées... I'll have to go see tomorrow if there isn't a stand with some real vin chaud.

Let's play a game actually, can you spot the old Eiffel lady in the shot below taken this afternoon?

(answer here with my mad paint skillz)

And if anyone cares... now they're doing some kind of squats with huge round balls they're supposed to throw over some barrier when they get up. This is clearly a sport I do not understand, that whole Strongman competition. I'll stick to Ironman for now.

It's not like I can blame my German skills either, I have a feeling that for this kind of thing my three years of classes are enough and understanding more would not help.

The bane of modern life: the damn master password that you have to change every couple of months and you can't use anything that even closely resembles the five previous passwords.

And then you wonder why people write down their passwords down and put them under the keyboard!

At least they're only asking me to change the master password... the other three passwords required for work can forever be the same, or so I hope.

The other thing I hate is phone numbers, I only remember one phone number and that is the home land line which hasn't changed for years and which was the one phone number to remember because back in the day we didn't have cellphones for everything. I actually don't even know my cell phone number, it's written on the back of the phone. I do know pi to a ridiculous decimal place though.

Speaking of modern things, if you want to see some modern art (like the one above), there are funky statues in Tuileries. Unless they've already taken them down, I can never remember the end dates of things.

Mini!Gali rocked those damned Barbie sunglasses and looked bad-ass posing in front of some marine show at MarineLand.

Current!Gali is wondering if they actually have someone doing environmental evaluations of army tanks and if so how does one get that job. If they don't, they should.

They should also train those tank drivers to drive "while thinking more about the environment"*... hey, apparently that's the new fad during driving lessons and driving a tank counts as driving.

* that environmental driving involves "sous régime" all the time (no idea what that is in English, never learnt to drive in English, basically when the engine is underused and you're going up a gear even though the engine does not provide enough power yet) and then you have no engine brake and therefore it's much easier to lose control. But who cares, you're thinking about the environment! Yay greenwashing!

I like to talk while I think and I like to write out what I think and this needs a lot of thinking.

I'll be honest, the entry on the Hello Kitty cookies has been sitting around for a while for the simple reason that I felt bad about posting a thing only written in French. It was as if I owed to someone to always write in English... when in reality I don't owe anything to anyone. In the end I opted for a short English version at the bottom of the post and it sounds pretty rushed. There are other things I feel bad about, posting too often is one of them. Posting about some random crap only I will ever care about.

And then at the end I always remember that the reason I'm still making my little LJ journey is because this is pretty much the only instance of my doing something consistently and it keeps me sane. Life is shitty? Choke a virtual bitch on LJ. Have deadlines approaching and need to find ways to procrastinate? Write tons of random stuff on LJ. Need to squee because life is just that awesome? LJ again. Feeling pretty darn amazing and need to boost that ego some more? You know where to find me, LJ. Who'll read this stuff in ten years? Probably just me... and hopefully future!Gali will still be able to read both English and French and she'll understand that current!Gali does not make a difference between the two languages.

There are things which are easier for me in English, don't ever, ever, ever (ever!) ask me to talk about my work in French. That is the thing I dread most! Having to present stuff at franco-français meetings and seminars makes up my nightmares. These days most everyday life things come in French, it's like that. I am now surrounded by French again and this kind of stuff happens. I'm pretty sure that if I were to go back to Ukraine for a long period of time and actually made the effort of learning the Ukrainian keyboard, I would eventually come up with posts in Ukie. I can only call this the "path of least resistance" way because that's what it is. Actually that's how I talk in real life. I won't just put in random French or Ukie words in a conversation with a person who only speaks in English because that would be just silly and rude and we would never understand one another. Still, I like knowing which languages my interlocutors speak because then I feel free to mix and match words from different languages. I like to laugh about the fact that unless a person perfectly understands Ukrainian, French and English their chances of understanding our family dinners are close to zero. It's probably a sign of some kind of mental degeneration but I don't really give a damn.

So in the end, I'm going to muster up the courage and stop feeling bad about writing things in French even though that means that only three people will probably understand what I'm talking about. Unless I have more Francophone on my flist than I realise. And who cares if I post often, it's just more data for the people who will write my biography in the future.

And here are two shots of Toulouse at night that I really can't think of anywhere else to put.

( +1 parce que c'est beaaaaauuuu... )

Something to think over on your way to/from work... (besides the usual "but why don't they let us walk in the trenches around the Invalides"?)

Why do people always want to lose weight before their wedding/graduation/other? They spend ages complaining about how they can't fit into the dress and must starve themselves only to complain for years and years after the event about how they can no longer fit into the dress and how much thinner they were "back then".

But what do I know! (well, I do know that a meal without dessert is a very sad one, does that count?)

If there is one thing that can be said about large cities it's that many of them are missing some essential things, like laundry hanging in windows in the city center. I'll never understand the need people have for dryers... and the need to make legislations that forbid people from hanging their laundry to dry outside. If you can't see what I'm referring to, check the right hand side of the first photo. And by "right" I mean left, of course.

Still the need people have for dryers will always stay a mystery to me. Even if you can't dry your clothes outsides, you can still buy one of those things on which to hang laundry... or do it the old fashioned way and use whatever hanging surface you can find. Really, I have yet to hear a good argument that would convince me that someone has a good need for a dryer.

Last ones from last Saturday...

( two more shots of Marseille )

In other random news, I just remembered a conversation I had with a friend a couple of years back about tarte tatin. Yes, we always have extremely useful conversations. This particular conversation was more of a disagreement, he claimed that a tarte tatin was always with apples and I claimed that one could make a tarte tatin with whatever fruit they wanted and the best one was with plums. I also remember that the first time we discussed this particular problem was on a Thursday night. I can't remember though if we had ever come to an agreement.

Is there actually a correct answer to that? Does "tarte tatin" always imply that it's made with apples? I bet there are grandmas out there who have a strong opinion on that subject.

First things first, everyone's tea exchange and other things I hadn't gotten around to sending out have been sent out earlier this week. I have no clue how fast the postal service works these days so

abbichicken,

carnifinda,

giggling_marlin,

xnightvixenx and

radixl3cti, expect it either in a week or in a month or two. Yes, sometimes it takes longer than expected.

In other news, I keep on finding random things in my boxes of stuff. The other day I found a stash of tiny candles. They're not half as cool as my shark candles but now I have an excuse to put some ambiance.

This brings out the fact that I have some things, like the green candle holder in the photo above, which I don't know what to do with. It was a housewarming gift and I don't know the etiquette when it comes to gifts like that. It wasn't a gift from a close friend that would mean a lot but it was still a gift. Can I give it to someone else? Can I donate it to the recycling center? I'm probably the only person on this planet who actually is bothered by such questions... makes me wonder just what people do with the gifts I give them.

Yeah, yeah, the emoing is continuing. I blame it on the fact that my last week here has officially started. At this time next week I'll already be heading to the airport! Strangely enough in my mind it seems like I've been living in Finland forever but it's only been two years and a half. Damn you time relativity!

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Gali

Where is Gali?

March 2017

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Page Summary

Calling all pear shapes.
I'm eating an orange.
I should take up knitting again.
I think a lot of peeps have "birthday" icons they can use.
Thoughts that come at night.
"wow" as Cassie would say.
What's in your bag?
I do believe in fairies!
I must ask (not "mustache" though) you a question...
Because not everything can make me happy.
Ils ont des hamsters en Alsace.
Right. I do not understand some sports.
3.14
Ah tiens, les parisiens viennent de marquer.
Un jour, des gens écriront des livres entiers sur ma personne.
La réflexion du jour.
No sir, there is no need for a dryer.
Candles and shooting stars.

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Where is Gali(nette)?

aka The day we caught the train

Entries tagged with gali has profound thoughts

Calling all pear shapes.

I'm eating an orange.

I should take up knitting again.

I think a lot of peeps have "birthday" icons they can use.

Thoughts that come at night.

"wow" as Cassie would say.

What's in your bag?

I do believe in fairies!

I must ask (not "mustache" though) you a question...

Because not everything can make me happy.

Ils ont des hamsters en Alsace.

Right. I do not understand some sports.

3.14

Ah tiens, les parisiens viennent de marquer.

Un jour, des gens écriront des livres entiers sur ma personne.

La réflexion du jour.

No sir, there is no need for a dryer.

Candles and shooting stars.